Chuck: I'm starting to think you are John Sheppard or one of his family members. You have to be completely nuts to continue to support this corruption. "Ever heard of remote access?" Remote access means nothing if you're not doing any work. Did she log in and do nothing all day for two years? Her reports were MONTHS late and the ones that were done were done incorrectly. TWO years worth of finances are a mess. That cost us $170k + benefits (only counting Deeds salary). You might not care about that Chuck, but I do and I would think most taxpayers in Seneca County care that two of the highest paid county employees were too busy with the hanky panky that they didn't have time (or the competence) to get their jobs done. I don't have an extra $170k laying around to throw away. Do you?

There will be special prosecutor for something like this. And yes it will be an embarrassment to the county government. If officials were aware and turned a blind eye to this. They should be charged too.

Seems to me, as soon as Bonadio discovered that the "ship" was sinking, Captain Sheppherd abandoned the ship.

Originally Posted By: scwoodchuck

To my knowledge "righting of the ship" was what Sheppard was trying to do and that the county never had the right " tools" in the first place. The outcome will be the same and you can bet the board is not going to like it, but that will never come to light.

Woodchuck, you mean to tell me that the County can pay Brandi Deeds $85k and John Sheppard $100k+ to do a job and we're not going to hold them accountable to do that job simply because they don't know how to use NYS's financial system?! Here's an idea, ask for help! Every other county in NYS has to use the same system!

Department Heads voiced their concerns to John Sheppard, but he shut them down quickly. Why would he allow Deeds to ignore her job duties for so long? Why wouldn't he listen to Department Heads when they told him the Finance Dept. was a mess?

Unfortunately there is so much more to this than not knowing and not asking for help. It turns out the two of them were dating over the past year. And because of this, Sheppard made sure he got rid of anyone that voiced their concerns about his girlfriend too loudly (EMS Director Melissa Taylor, Fiscal Manager Wendy Coleman).

And Deeds couldn't get her work done because she was rarely at work. Her boyfriend gave her loads of time off. She was out of the office for months and had thousands of unopened emails (including ones telling her that she had missed important deadlines). She neglected her job duties while making $85k from the citizens of Seneca County and Sheppard allowed it. Funny thing is, you only get 2 weeks of vacation time when you've been at the County for the length of time Deeds was there. I wonder how she was able to take so much time off without falsifying her timesheet?! I guess there's another thing for the investigators to look at. As a taxpayer I'm not pleased with allowing someone to take months of vacation time that they don't have (especially making what she was making and the fact that she didn't do her job). And since we're on this topic, Sheppard's Confidential Secretary was also gone all the time. It's difficult to take 2 weeks off to go to Disney World when you only have 4 days of vacation time. And Sheppard signed that timesheet - another charge of falsifying a timesheet). His office was full of corruption! Good riddance! I welcome Mitch Rowe to the county. Hopefully we can keep him for a few years to straighten out the mess Sheppard left us.

All those posts (and BONADIO) indicated they were incompetent. That is not a crime, unless someone falsified business records or filed false instruments in the process.

(I would note that most of the BOS did not seem to notice any problem over the two years and was VERY defensive of any criticism of either of them, despite not having any monthly reports or any financial records. Now the taxpayers are paying to reconstruct the records at a cost of $100,000 and counting.)

Let's see if their behavior was criminal in the eyes of the law.

Originally Posted By: scwoodchuck

_________________________
"No amount of evidence will ever convince an idiot."

No I agree, there were problems before. But the former CM did nothing to correct them. As just one example, the state comptroller audited water and sewer and in 2017 issued a long list of recommendations

Not a single one has been implemented.

And they created new and different problems, for example allowing Sampson to adding 10 cottages, renting for $350/night, without paying the connection fees for water and sewer AND not charging any quarterly fees. 10 homes connections to water and sewer, would be $3000, each or $30000. The quarterly charges for a sewer and water would be about $180, or $1800 for the 10 cottages. The county isn't charging that either.

Originally Posted By: scwoodchuck

you still refuse to admit that there were problems long before John became county manager.

_________________________
"No amount of evidence will ever convince an idiot."